Glad as Agnes was when her lover returned for lunch, she was at the same time rather dismayed: she knew that Mrs. Failing would not like her plans altered. And her dismay was justified. Their hostess was a little stiff, and asked whether Stephen had been obnoxious.
"Indeed he hasn't. He spent the whole time looking after me.""From which I conclude he was more obnoxious than usual."Rickie praised him diligently. But his candid nature showed everything through. His aunt soon saw that they had not got on.
She had expected this--almost planned it. Nevertheless she resented it, and her resentment was to fall on him.
The storm gathered slowly, and many other things went to swell it. Weakly people, if they are not careful, hate one another, and when the weakness is hereditary the temptation increases. Elliots had never got on among themselves. They talked of "The Family,"but they always turned outwards to the health and beauty that lie so promiscuously about the world. Rickie's father had turned, for a time at all events, to his mother. Rickie himself was turning to Agnes. And Mrs. Failing now was irritable, and unfair to the nephew who was lame like her horrible brother and like herself.
She thought him invertebrate and conventional. She was envious of his happiness. She did not trouble to understand his art. She longed to shatter him, but knowing as she did that the human thunderbolt often rebounds and strikes the wielder, she held her hand.
Agnes watched the approaching clouds. Rickie had warned her; now she began to warn him. As the visit wore away she urged him to be pleasant to his aunt, and so convert it into a success.
He replied, "Why need it be a success?"--a reply in the manner of Ansell.
She laughed. "Oh, that's so like you men--all theory! What about your great theory of hating no one? As soon as it comes in useful you drop it.""I don't hate Aunt Emily. Honestly. But certainly I don't want to be near her or think about her. Don't you think there are two great things in life that we ought to aim at--truth and kindness?
Let's have both if we can, but let's be sure of having one or the other. My aunt gives up both for the sake of being funny.""And Stephen Wonham," pursued Agnes. "There's another person you hate--or don't think about, if you prefer it put like that.""The truth is, I'm changing. I'm beginning to see that the world has many people in it who don't matter. I had time for them once.
Not now." There was only one gate to the kingdom of heaven now.
Agnes surprised him by saying, "But the Wonham boy is evidently a part of your aunt's life. She laughs at him, but she is fond of him.""What's that to do with it?"
"You ought to be pleasant to him on account of it.""Why on earth?"
She flushed a little. "I'm old-fashioned. One ought to consider one's hostess, and fall in with her life. After we leave it's another thing. But while we take her hospitality I think it's our duty."Her good sense triumphed. Henceforth he tried to fall in with Aunt Emily's life. Aunt Emily watched him trying. The storm broke, as storms sometimes do, on Sunday.
Sunday church was a function at Cadover, though a strange one.
The pompous landau rolled up to the house at a quarter to eleven.
Then Mrs. Failing said, "Why am I being hurried?" and after an interval descended the steps in her ordinary clothes. She regarded the church as a sort of sitting-room, and refused even to wear a bonnet there. The village was shocked, but at the same time a little proud; it would point out the carriage to strangers and gossip about the pale smiling lady who sat in it, always alone, always late, her hair always draped in an expensive shawl.
This Sunday, though late as usual, she was not alone. Miss Pembroke, en grande toilette, sat by her side. Rickie, looking plain and devout, perched opposite. And Stephen actually came too, murmuring that it would be the Benedicite, which he had never minded. There was also the Litany, which drove him into the air again, much to Mrs. Failing's delight. She enjoyed this sort of thing. It amused her when her Protege left the pew, looking bored, athletic, and dishevelled, and groping most obviously for his pipe. She liked to keep a thoroughbred pagan to shock people.
"He's gone to worship Nature," she whispered. Rickie did not look up. "Don't you think he's charming?" He made no reply.
"Charming," whispered Agnes over his head.
During the sermon she analysed her guests. Miss Pembroke--undistinguished, unimaginative, tolerable. Rickie--intolerable.
"And how pedantic!" she mused. "He smells of the University library. If he was stupid in the right way he would be a don."She looked round the tiny church; at the whitewashed pillars, the humble pavement, the window full of magenta saints. There was the vicar's wife. And Mrs. Wilbraham's bonnet. Ugh! The rest of the congregation were poor women, with flat, hopeless faces--she saw them Sunday after Sunday, but did not know their names--diversified with a few reluctant plough-boys, and the vile little school children row upon row. "Ugh! what a hole," thought Mrs.
Failing, whose Christianity was the type best described as "cathedral." "What a hole for a cultured woman! I don't think it has blunted my sensations, though; I still see its squalor as clearly as ever. And my nephew pretends he is worshipping. Pah! the hypocrite." Above her the vicar spoke of the danger of hurrying from one dissipation to another. She treasured his words, and continued: "I cannot stand smugness. It is the one, the unpardonable sin. Fresh air! The fresh air that has made Stephen Wonham fresh and companionable and strong. Even if it kills, I will let in the fresh air."Thus reasoned Mrs. Failing, in the facile vein of Ibsenism. She imagined herself to be a cold-eyed Scandinavian heroine. Really she was an English old lady, who did not mind giving other people a chill provided it was not infectious.
